Hot Wings & Rug Burns

Blink – and you might just miss it. I know I almost did. And I was there. Our discussion turned serious rather abruptly. A wild twist of a tangent that seemed out of place for this low-key, weekend night. My boys and I huddled down to the Warehouse District on the fringes of Downtown Minneapolis. The locale of choice this evening? A little place we liked to call The Loon. Most everyone else liked to call it that too, since it was the name of the joint. Not in search of anything really. No good time. No mean buzz. No piece of tail. No attempts to regain some glory days that floated by us. We were more or less out, because that’s just what guys do. More importantly, that’s what my boys do best. The night had been shooting par up to that point. We were all caught up in our own little endeavors. Drew and Trick had been casing the bevy of suburban trim loaded at the bar, blitzed on Merlot and a half-dozen shots, in search of a good time to accompany their bachelorette party that had found its way into the big city on this late, summer Saturday. Scotty had been drowning his relative happiness in his fifth Captain ‘n’ Coke, celebrating his unique sense of freedom away from his better half for the better part of the evening. Dan was checking his beeper and its CNN connection for the latest college football scores, desperately hoping that Clemson covered the spread. I was somewhere inside my own head thinking something about nothing too specific, cutting the deadened remains of my bubble gum that had turned stale after huffing down a half-pack of Camel Lights in an attempt to distract myself from having a beer, or any other booze that was experiencing an up tick in its marketing. As I mindlessly toyed with the rubber band that perpetually adorns my left wrist, I was hastened back to the conversation at the table by a gentle prodding of my elbow. I more or less shook off my inner-dialogue and became aware of my own presence within the bar once more. After another pull off my nail, I asked Tommy to repeat his question. The one that had slipped past my goalie. A question so important it seemed that in search of its answer, the query had elicited a physical response from him unto me. “I said, have you ever thought about it?” Tommy asked again. I must have missed more than I thought, because even this fragment didn’t shine any rays of light amongst the clouds in my head, or the ones that I had just exhaled from my lips. I tried lending a reassuring head-bob-slash-nod-coupled-with-a-smile-motion to Tommy. You know the one you use when you’re not entirely sure what the other guy said, so you just guess yes instead. But Tommy wasn’t buying it. His quizzical expression never faltered even after my feeble attempt at acknowledgement fizzled away. I mean what’s a guy supposed to do? There’s a mound of assorted hot wings in varying flavors and spices just asking to be devoured directly in front of me. I got the Kinks blaring in my skull, courtesy of the Loon’s choice stereo. I got Dan yelling obscenities at me for suggesting he lay down on Clemson and they’re in the fourth, down six on his bookied line. Scotty is jabbering away in my general vicinity about some sort of landscaping scam sweeping the western suburbs that he somehow got snagged into. Drew and Trick are tangled up to their Abercrombie & Fitch hats in cleavage and belly rings ala the displaced pelt from the bachelorette party, who have now decided to grace us with their presence, while one of them has her thong-wearing ass directly at my seated eye-level gyrating to You Really Got Me, with her bestest friend in the whole world poking her suck-for-a-buck T-shirt in my face, and I really want one of the Blow Pops attached to her with Scotch tape to get rid of the rubbery remnants of my gum and the wicked bad taste it’s left tracing on my tongue, to me in that moment, a dollar for one sucker seems entirely worth the price of admission, especially if I get to take it off the bride-to-be’s amply endowed chest, but Tommy needs his answer, and he needs it right now. So, I dismiss everything else with nothing more than a swipe of my hand like a pestilent Caesar in favor of my friend and his current dilemma. “I’m sorry. Thought about what?” I semi-yell to cover the persistent thumping of the Loon, peppered with my annoyance for Tommy, because if it wasn’t for his meddling question, I could be sucking something else entirely, rather than sucking up to him. “Have you heard a word I’ve been saying to you?” he asked. And all the various amusements within my arm’s reach, especially the young vixens, begin to tempt me again. I signal to Tommy a casual swooping of my index finger in a fit of non-verbal communication, which resembles a referee’s call for a resetting of the shot clock, as if to say, “It’s not my fault, it’s the bar’s.” Tommy seems to oblige because he finally notices the tasty morsels that have laid themselves on to our cookie sheet. Now he gets it. But he still won’t let me have my fun. He decided to forgive me instead. The Kinks have made way for Social Distortion by this point, and Tommy stage-dives right in, “I was just saying, that I’ve been wondering lately…” Good for you, Tommy. Congratulations. We all knew you could. Now keep in mind, Tommy and the word wondering rarely propose to marry themselves within the same sentence. More so for curiosity’s sake, I asked the question that wanted to be asked, “Wondering about what?” Tommy was glad I did. I could see that in his crazy eyes. The eyes that were tripping over his mouth in order to reveal whatever was burning a hole in his brain, something akin to Superman’s X-ray vision. “Timing,” he said. That was it? One simple word that evidently encompassed more than I would ever know for Tommy. I had my own connotations of that particular noun and what they may mean to me, but it seemed as if Tommy had delved a little deeper, uncovered some glorious prize, discovered a lost city of possibility within the context of the word itself. Quite frankly, I was almost jealous. I relented before the multiple definitions swallowed me whole. “Well whadiya mean exactly?” I asked, fearing that within my own career complacency, Tommy had indeed grown smarter than me. By this time, the chick with the obscenely, delicious ass had taken her friends and exited our scene. Probably to find a few good men. A few good men whose intentions were not so graphic or readily obnoxious. Drew and Trick only dug in harder with the next batch that aimlessly happened by, innocent gazelles trailing into the lions’ watering hole. Most nights, the gazelles never stood a fighting chance. And amidst the strained lines the boys slung their way, they debated if the bachelorette party leaving was a good thing or not. For Drew, the girls’ departure served them well. Better odds. Simple as that. One of them was getting married anyway. It was a lost cause. For Trick, the opposite was true and I’m ready to side with him on this one. Seeing one of your best friends about to be married, kinda places things in perspective for the rest of the troupe. Desperation clung to the bride’s friends like Rosie O’Donnell clings to a turkey drumstick. Desperation is a man’s second best friend. (The first is a dog to be sure, but only within the context of a freshly-mowed lawn. At night, at a bar, man’s first best friend surely is liquor.) Those girls would have been up for any, and I repeat, any, sexual Olympics that Drew and Trick might have suggested after just one more shot of Jag. Plus, who knows? Maybe the bride herself wanted one last taste of the good life. One more divergent path before a life of the straight and narrow.